COVID-19 adding complexity to emergency planning for hurricane season

Monday

Emergency management planning for hurricane season is ongoing as the state has issued a statewide “stay-at-home” order effective through April 30, with the potential for extension.

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DEFUNIAK SPRINGS — Like his counterparts across the region and the state, Walton County Emergency Management Director Jeff Goldberg has been planning for the upcoming hurricane season with a new and significant variable in place — the ongoing spread of COVID-19, the serious respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus.

As is the case every year, hurricane season begins June 1 and continues through Nov. 30. This year, however, emergency management planning for hurricane season is ongoing as the state has issued a statewide “stay-at-home” order effective through April 30, with the potential for extension. And in Walton County, emergency planning is ongoing as a local state of emergency, effective through April 19, is in effect, also with the possibility of extension.

Layered on top of those dates is another date — May 8. That’s when the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects that Florida will reach its peak of COVID-19 hospital admissions, at 20.8 people per million of state population.

In Walton County as of late Monday morning, 24 of the 205 people tested for COVID-19, or 12%, had positive test results.

“We have daily teleconferences with the state,” Goldberg said of himself and other county emergency management directors. Additionally, Goldberg and his regional counterparts have a weekly conversation, and there are numerous informal contacts in between, he said. Those discussions often involve disaster response partners such as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.

Already, as a result of the COVID-19 spread, Walton County’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), nerve center of local hurricane response, is operating at Level 2. That’s just below a Level 1 complete activation of the center, Goldberg explained.

► MARCH 28, 2020: AccuWeather: 2020 hurricane season will be ‘busy’ (PHOTOS)

The current Level 2 activation, even though it is outside of hurricane season, provides a hint as to how COVID-19 would shape a Level 3 activation, according to Goldberg.

Out of concern for halting the spread of the virus, the current Level 2 staffing is well below what regular Level 2 staffing would be, with the only staff actually working out of the center comprising Emergency Management’s operations, planning and logistics officers, the county’s public information officer and a social media manager, according to Goldberg.

Other staff who would routinely be in the EOC are working remotely, as part of the “social distancing” strategy to halt the spread of COVID-19. That likely would continue to be the case at Level 3 during a hurricane response, Goldberg said.

“Who do we need in the EOC?” has been part of hurricane planning both locally and across the region since that work began several weeks ago, Goldberg said. And, if people aren’t going to be in the EOC, the question becomes how they are going to communicate with each other and the center.

One of the lessons learned during Hurricane Michael, although it wasn’t a particularly tough issue in Walton County, was a need for redundancy in communications options.

For the upcoming hurricane season, Walton County has 30 phones with each of the area’s cell phone service providers — AT&T, Verizon and Southern Linc — in addition to three satellite telephones. Additionally, Goldberg said, the EOC’s fiber internet link has a cable back-up.

Of course, assuring emergency management personnel can do their jobs effectively under social distancing is just one aspect of hurricane preparedness in conjunction with COVID-19.

A major challenge, Goldberg said, will be finding shelter options for people with COVID-19 symptoms. One preliminary step, Goldberg said, will be taking the temperatures of everyone entering a local hurricane shelter.

One of the things that he and his colleagues across the region are doing now, according to Goldberg, is evaluating the local real-estate stock to determine where there might be buildings that could be used as “non-congregant” shelters. Those kinds of shelters, which could include hotels, motels and schools, would have individual rooms that could provide some protection against the spread of coronavirus.

But, Goldberg cautioned, “we don’t have a lot of facilities” that could meet those needs.

Which leads to another modification of at least the local approach to hurricane response, Goldberg said. For the upcoming hurricane season, emergency management officials will be asking people who are outside of officially identified evacuation zones, and who live in sturdy structures such as concrete block dwellings, to remain in their homes during a hurricane.

That guidance is directed, in part, at ensuring that local shelter space is adequate, Goldberg said, and also to free up space for people who may find themselves dealing with COVID-19 symptoms during a hurricane.

► APRIL 2, 2020: The virus and now this: New forecast says brace for major hurricane to strike the U.S.

Discussion of dealing with a pandemic like COVID-19 has been a regular topic of local emergency management discussions, according to Goldberg..

“We’ve talked about that since H1N1,” he said. The H1N1 “swine flu” virus emerged in the United States in 2009. It resulted in one death and two hospitalizations in Walton County, as the health department administered nearly 7,000 vaccinations.

While the swine flu gave local emergency management officials a chance to test and update plans for a pandemic response, the 2020 update to the county’s comprehensive emergency response plan, approved by county commissioners in January, also notes that no specific formal assessment of pandemic preparedness has been done locally.

“... (B)ut,” the plan reads, “the local understanding (is) that if a pandemic does impact our community, it will quickly overwhelm our local healthcare system.”

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